THE HOUSE ON THE HILL
A Westcliff house with its own garden pavilion
HEN architects Silvio Rech and Lesley Carstens first considered the site of this garden pavilion in the old Johannesburg suburb of Westcliff, they were struck by the almost paradoxical character of its setting. Westcliff is one of the oldest residential areas in the city. Many of the grand old historical houses built by the Randlords are concentrated there, designed in the colonial arts-andcrafts style by the likes of Sir Herbert Baker. Yet, Rech and Carstens had a pristine piece of land to build on, and despite the proximity of the city and surrounding suburbia, the presence of nature was strong.
The site is on a ridge sloping steeply down to a ravine. Landscaper Patrick Watson had cleared the undergrowth that had run rampant before the design of the pavilion began. In its place, he had created a landscape of grassy mounds and rockeries, partly excavating and uncovering the iron-rich red-orange rocks embedded in the koppie.
Rech and Carstens’s brief was to design a garden pavilion that would serve as a place for entertaining, and include guest accommodation and a pool. They took their cue from the uncovered rocks, inspired by the idea of a buried landscape and a lost connection with nature. The notion of an archaeological uncovering prompted them to consider a rammed earth wall. The stratified pattern of rammed earth suggests layering and the passage of time, and would extend the idea of the excavation Watson had begun. “There was one particular type of sand that was exactly the same colour of the rocks outside,” says Rech. Connecting or blending the building with its setting in this way would blur the distinction between nature and artifice. “It’s a way of getting it back in touch with the essence of the site,” adds Carstens.
The rest of the design developed from there. By positioning the building thoughtfully, the pair made the most of the views and captured a sense of the landscape’s natural volumes. On top of the grassy mound, an enormous eucalyptus tree has created a sheltered space beneath its branches. “The garden falls away to tall eucalyptus trees on the other side too, so you get a nice feeling of exaggerated volume between them,” says Carstens. Rech adds: “The front end of the pavilion is designed to put you into the volume of the garden.”
Rech and Carstens are lodge and resort architects who built their reputation through a contemporary African vernacular, initially blending materials from the sites they worked on, often improvising with local craftsmen and artisanal influences to create a textured, organic architecture. Like a safari lodge, this pavilion was an opportunity to create architecture for sheer enjoyment. Here, however, they pushed their design in a new direction to develop “a modern African architectural language”.
“We had the idea of working with a simple shed-type structure, like a flat-roof barn,” says Rech. The Highveld farmhouse is the closest thing there is to a vernacular architecture in Joburg, reminiscent of a time before gold was discovered and the city was farmland. Rech and Carstens fused this local architectural reference with modernist influences, particularly the mid-century steel and glass pavilions by the likes of Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson.
The pavilion’s modernist framework is constructed from salvaged ironwood railway sleepers. “We engineered steel brackets to hold those together to create the substructure of the building,” says Rech. The pavilion’s refined geometry is expressed in raw, recycled materials with historical associations. The eucalyptus on top of the mound now intersects the building, at once incorporated into its structure and offsetting the crisp glass